Pretending Trump’s Actions Are Anything but What They Are Is Damaging
There is a lot of naive understanding of Trump. New York Times columnist Ezra Klein gave one expression of that recently, so I’ll use that as a starting point.
Years ago Ezra wrote primarily about economics and I valued that material and corresponded with him. In the recent piece at one point he was speculating about possibilities for understanding Trump. For instance maybe Trump has no plan. In the press, whether the topic is tariffs or Ukraine or reducing government, there has been a lot of speculation about what the plan is. Whenever this “what’s the plan” puzzlement is expressed by journalists or well-established policy wonks it makes me want to shout, “Of course there is no plan!” He has proven endlessly that most of the time he’s just saying whatever sounds good and he might figure out later how to follow up on it, or make a show of trying to, or just drop it if it’s no longer a useful topic to him.
A slight variation on this I’ve heard from other journalists is wondering, “gee, it’s hard to tell what the logic is in this action”. For instance what is the logic of giving a no-tax-on-tips break when the loss of Medicaid or food stamps will more than offset that. Again the temptation to shout. This time about how the intention is not to help average people but to cut as much help to them as possible so the money can be given to the top. That journalists either naively speculate about the logic of these actions, or think that by framing it as something to puzzle over they’re presenting it responsibly, is damaging. A spade needs to be called a spade. It brings to mind Dana Carvey’s Church Lady act where she would calmly wonder what was causing some evil to happen only to finally explode with, “Is it Satan!?” The point is not to equate Trump to Satan but rather the Church Lady’s need to shout out the obvious thing that too many are not saying.
Ezra later wondered whether Trump is just extremely distractible and simply can’t stick to a line of thought on a topic. Again the temptation to shout about how of course that’s true. It’s obvious from his meandering speech, his relentless changes of position, and his career. His career in particular shows his lack of plan. A mobile phone business was just started by the Trump company that would sell U.S. made phones when, oops, there’s no way to do that. He started a casino he couldn’t make into a sustained business. He did the same with his mail-order meat sales and his investment college and numerous other ventures.
One thing that I suspect is at least somewhat planned is the benefits to Trump from his “big beautiful bill” without regard to the likely damage to congressional Republicans. The bill gives him direct benefits as a high-income person and it will endear him to many of the rich and powerful he might want to do business with later. While he has in the past toyed with the idea of running for a third (unconstitutional) term he hasn’t mentioned that in quite a while. It appears at the end of his current term he’s done with elected office. If congressional Republicans suffer because of backlash to this bill what’s that to him? That they did what he asked without calculating his self-interest would follow a pattern of his. Getting people to do things for him and then letting them suffer when consequences fall on them. (Rudy Giuliani? Numerous people involved in fake elector schemes? Mike Pence?)
Maybe Ezra has long since concluded that Trump has no plan and is easily distracted and was just presenting these ideas as fresh and speculative for the sake of the interview, but that, “Gee, I wonder” approach to Trump is so common, and so damaging.
One thing that both Ezra and his guest, Kyla Scanlon, got wrong is an economic issue. See an upcoming piece about that.
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